Of course we all feel stronger about a situation, the closer it is to us. So, the oil spill in San Francisco Bay of some 65,000 gallons of oil and 150 birds dead, has us all alarmed and ready to go out and help, and to damn those who caused the accident.
But as disasters go, it’s relatively small, even if gumming up the shores of paradise.
Take the Black Sea spill of 650,000 gallons and 30,000 birds dead. 11 ships sunk, sailors dead.
A flock of about 1,000 rails, a species of wetland bird, were huddled on the beach, unable to fly because their feathers were coated with oil. Some were unable to stand.
Cleanup workers said wild dogs had been taking advantage of the birds’ condition to attack them. A Reuters reporter found a number of the birds on the beach with their heads torn off.
NYTimes with additional information: damage to persist for year.
It seems a bit cruel to post news of disasters about which we can do little but gape in shock. The elements are almost always the same: idiocy and greed in the face of the predictable. No double hulls on the tankers. River ships used at sea. Ignoring storm reports. [It seems the tanker that broke apart never got its anchor up, leaving it particularly vulnerable. As every sailor knows, in big storms you put to sea.] Improper safety measures. Changing the damn-the-consequences economic culture that rules the world is something we can be part of.
No mention yet of how the ferocity of the storm compares to years past. In the North Sea, a storm front at the same time pushed tides higher higher by several feet and was in process of scaring the bejesus out of everyone before it died down, fearing tides as high as the 1953 disaster when over 2,400 died in Europe.